The invention relates generally to systems and methods for analysis of fluids, and more particularly to systems and methods for analysis of fluids using resonant sensors.
Typically, resonant sensors are used to provide information about physical, chemical, and biological constituents present in a sample. Selectivity of sensors is desirable in sensor performance and applications. Typically, lack of selectivity prevents the wide use of sensors in sensing physical, chemical, and biological species in fluids in applications such as but not limited to, medical diagnostics, life sciences, water, oil and gas, and security. Impedance spectroscopy is often used for materials science and materials characterization. Impedance spectroscopy provides a number of advantages in the analysis of biological species as it provides a non-invasive, non-toxic platform for analysis of biological species. However, the well-accepted limitations of traditional impedance spectroscopy include relatively low sensitivity and prohibitively long acquisition times over the broad frequency range.
Current laboratory techniques often utilize a plurality of pre-treatment steps for the sample and require a pathologist or a technician to manually identify the sample composition. Current sensor techniques utilize different transducers based on optical, electrical, mechanical, thermal, and magnetic detection principles. The sensors may be resonant or non-resonant. The resonant transducers provide a mechanism to more accurately probe the dielectric properties of any samples in the presence of uncontrolled ambient environmental noise contributions as compared to non-resonant transducers. Non-limiting examples of ambient environmental noise contributions include temperature, media composition, and presence of interferences in the sample.